


Impulse

by paynesgrey



Series: Turn and Face the Strange [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, One Shot, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 11:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2346845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paynesgrey/pseuds/paynesgrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor is an unusually good mood, so Clara takes advantage. Spoilers for "Time Heist." Clara x Doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impulse

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "favorable" prompt for the Summer Mini Challenge on LJ.

At first, Clara doesn’t know how to react when she catches the Doctor sprawled out on her bed staring at her ceiling. She sees his lips moving as he concentrates on something hard, his eyebrows furrowing from the labor. Seconds later he notices her arrival, lifts up his head, and she sees an unusual relief glow over his face.

“You’re back! Finally.” 

“You’re on my bed,” she says, mystified and amused.

“It’s the best place to count all those scuffs and marks. Did you know you have fifty different colored markings on your ceilings? I’m trying to place what they look like, some look like horses, some look like Adipose, some...well clouds are too generic, maybe a cat’s brain…”

“How long have you been here?” Clara says, plopping down next to him on the bed. She rests her hands over her chest and looks up at the ceiling, squinting to see what the Doctor sees.

“Not long, five minutes or so…”

“You count and make shapes fast…”

He huffs, but she’s certain the noise is partially a laugh.

“Should I tell you a story about Winston Churchill?” he asks out of the blue.

Clara giggles. “Where’d that come from?”

He points. “That mark over there looks like his head.” Clara laughs and the Doctor smiles, and she turns her head to look into his eyes. Immediately, she realizes her good fortune. 

The Doctor is in a favorable mood, so Clara takes advantage. It’s about time too. She’s seen him make jokes before, but they are dryer after his change. He’s good at stories, seeming gruff as he tells them but following through with an interesting tale. After the bank heist, she and the Doctor and their heist companions Psi and Saibra enjoyed a good laugh while eating Chinese food, and Clara remembers how nice it felt to hear laughter in the TARDIS again. 

“Yes, Doctor, tell the story about Winston Churchill,” she says. He turns to her and grins.

“No date tonight?” he asks quickly.

“Not if you count the telly, and I gather your stories are more interesting than whatever is on the Beeb tonight.”

He nods. “Good girl.” He pauses, shifts gears, and the smile of nostalgia returns. “Well basically,  
Winston Churchill and I go way back, and he such a serious fellow, there was a time I regretted giving him my number… anyway…”

Clara listens with intent, but she can’t help but get lost in the way his face lights up as he tells the story. His words are coarse but amusing as he dives into the memory and explains. His pace speeds up, and she has to bend an ear to listen through that thick Scottish lilt. She can follow, but at moments she doesn’t want to. She just wants to watch him, to see in his new yet old face that he’s the same Doctor. It’s taken time to adjust, but she sees it more in him everyday.

And when he moves his hands along with the story, she scoots closer to him on the bed, turning on her side and resting her head on her hands. She wants to grab his hand, entwine her fingers in his, and feel the closeness that is lost from the last face he wore. 

The boyishness is still there. If anything, he’s even more childish, as he finds nothing strange or awkward at lying on her bed, resting in the very same place where she sleeps some nights, longing for warmth - _his_ warmth, and unable to let him go even after all the things they’ve been through.

“And then his face gets all pink like a big balloon, and he stomps his feet and his chins move with his anger and he says ‘Doctor, I am Winston Churchill, do not presume I am beneath you in intelligence!’ and the whole time I’m staring at the cream from his tea on his shirt lapel.”

Clara laughs, and the Doctor chuckles with her. He stares at the ceiling, his mirth settling in the lines of his face. She looks at the creases of his eyes as he smiles, and she stares at him as he silently falls into his memories. “Yes, that one spot on the wall looks like old Chiny Churchill.”

He turns to her, and when he meets her eyes, his smile fades slightly. “What is it?”

“I’ve missed this,” Clara says.

“What?”

“You, laughing and telling jokes. You being happy,” Clara says. 

“I told you, Clara. I’m not much into laughing, so I don’t know what you mean,” he states.

“Oh, shut up, you just don’t like other people laughing at your expense,” she says.

“No, no, I don’t usually like it all,” he says.

“Then what were you doing just then, eh?” she asks.

“Telling a witty joke about Winston Churchill. _You,_ Clara, were laughing because you found it funny. And it was funny. Because I told it,” he says.

Clara rolls her eyes. “You also said you don’t like banter. Look at you, the King of Bantering!”

“Am not,” he says defiantly.

“Pfff, and you also said that you don’t like karaoke, yet I caught you humming along in the TARDIS the other day to some Penny Lane, scribbling on your boards.”

“It was your imagination.”

“You also said you don’t like mimes, and while we were walking down that shopping district on the twin purple moons, you stared at that tree person mime for five minutes, completely entranced. I even saw you grin.”

“Not me. Doesn’t sound like me,” he protests. 

“You are an idiot. You say one thing but mean another. Your mum must have told you not to touch the stove and you probably went over and put your whole hand on it.”

“I didn’t!” he says, a little too loudly. Clara laughs, and she almost hates that she’s spoiled his good mood by the aggravation on his face.

“Aww, I’m sorry Doctor,” she says, still giggling. “I’m terrible for putting you in a bad mood. Carry on and count the spots on my ceiling.”

“I’ve told you, I’ve already done it,” he says. “I was waiting for you to come back from your school...thingy to go somewhere.”

“Then why are you here telling me Winston Churchill stories?” she asks.

“I got distracted,” he says, looking at her. She feels at a loss for words as he looks her over, his stare staying longer than is comfortable. “This bed…”

“Yeah?”

“Very comfortable…” he says. “I usually don’t like beds.”

“Among other things, apparently. See how we’re changing your mind about things. Apples, yogurt, bantering…”

He purses his lips and Clara giggles. He’s trying very hard to be cross with her, but his eyes say something differently. He enjoys bantering with her. He enjoys waiting for her in her room, doing silly mindless things until that moment she comes home. He enjoys filling those distracting minutes and hours of her life.

The Doctor is changing his mind about a lot of things, but one of the things she can’t wrap her head around is how he truly feels about her.

“So, wanna go to another planet? Whole planet made of candy trees and chocolate rivers.”

“Sounds like Willy Wonka.”

“It is. I was actually going to take you to a planet that’s enslaving alien citizens and keeping them for food. Thought you would like a little heroic adventure after a mind numbing day at that school.”

“Well, English can kind of be like an adventure, at least the grading papers part. No,” she says. “No, teaching English in this grade is more like a nightmare.”

“Very well, a palette cleanser then. Let’s go save some people,” he says, smiling at her. The thrill of adventure is prevalent in his eyes. He’s ready, but he isn’t moving from her bed.

“I’m ready,” she says, not moving either. 

“Alright, let’s go,” he says, shifting slightly sideways on her bed but still staring at her. 

He’s about to leap up when she catches his hand. He starts, and she feels him tense and then go still. Her fingers entwine with his, and she pulls his arm back down on the bed. She stares into his eyes, searching through all that humor that was just on the surface, now receding back into the cold iron darkness that he encases around himself. Clara wants to catch it before it’s gone again, falling back into his stark words and aloof demeanor.

“Wait,” she says quickly, as if she can stop him from shielding himself again from her tenderness.

“I’m waiting,” he says, a little too breathlessly.

“I mean it, when I said I like you like this, happy and laughing and in a good mood. I meant it, Doctor,” Clara says. “I know… changing was hard for you. I think I know better than anyone, and you know that I’m here…”

“Yes,” he says quickly.

“But I don’t want you to change too much, Doctor. You don’t have to. Not for your mistakes. Not for me.”

“Clara, Clara, don’t be so…”

She leans in, tethered to an unexpected impulse, and she tastes his lips, halting his words. She lingers, her lips a breath away from his, and she can feel the strong exhale he takes from her sudden kiss. He doesn’t move, doesn’t lean back, and she can feel his gaze through heavy eyes. She braves another kiss, slow and steady, taking in the shapes of his lips, his mouth, his hesitant tongue.

“Clara... “ The word comes almost like a scolding, but he doesn’t seem too cross, not as much as she thinks he would be. He seems bewildered, unable to form the right words to reject her.

Only this time he can’t. He can’t reject something that he truly wants. He can tell her that he doesn’t want her, but like a lot of things lately, he can easily change his mind.

But Clara wonders if he’s ever disliked those things in the first place. Maybe he’s in denial. Maybe… he thinks if he tells himself he doesn’t like them, he will believe it. 

If he tells himself he doesn’t care about Clara, maybe she’ll break his hearts, teach him a lesson, and remind him that he cannot truly have the things he covets. He’s made too many mistakes.

There are no rewards for his many mistakes.

“See, told you,” Clara says, breaking the tension in the room. “I told you that you really like the things you say you don’t like. Bantering, laughing…” She closes her eyes and rests her forehead against his. “And me…”

He squeezes her hand and settles closer.

They move even slower out of her bed, then out of her room, and onto their next adventure.

Together.

END


End file.
